I wrote in the previous posting that the basic principle of online communication is to remember the human, which means consideration for other online users.

Simple and basic as it is, it might seem difficult to implement in online settings, especially in asynchronous ones where we often don’t see the person at the receiving end of the message. Considering the diversity of online communication tools (both synchronous and asynchronous), I wonder if some of them are more successful in helping us comply with the rule. For example,  using videoconferencing should theoretically help us be more human than, let’s say, on an anonymous discussion forum (like the one found in online versions of tabloids where people regularly slag others off for trivial things like an unfetching hat or crazy haircut). And how about instant messenger type of communication tools, including mobile phones,  which sometimes might fall somewhere in between synchronous and asynchronous modes of communication. Due to their frequently limited size (text messages, direct messaging on twitter), users often have to take shortcuts when expressing their views. There is also a question of emotional closeness to the recipient; for example mobile phone messages tend to be more personal so the ‘humanness’ index should be higher. Twitter  is a bit more controversial, especially when you think of its use as a back channel where somebody can be heckled, or tweckled! See Steve Wheeler's post on Weapon of Mass Destruction. Strangely enough this happens when you actually see the person but this sadly doesn't prevent you from forgetting the human!

More loose thoughts related to entry two to follow.

I thought I would use a post to list a few quotes from this week’s readings. Hopefully they will be useful when I come to writing the synoptic paper :-)

Greenfield (1984) This paper is somewhat dated. However it summarises the early research of video games. Many of it’s findings are still relevant today:

• “Video games have been dubbed the marriage between television and computers”
  
• “Popular arcade games involve tremendous amount of visual action, and is may be one source of their appeal”
  
•  “Video Games are the first medium to combine dynamism with active participatory role for the child”
•  “Another concern about video games is that they are merely sensorimotor games of eye-hand coordination and that they are therefore mindless”
•  “The motivating features of video games are beginning to be put to more explicit educational use” 

Kane (2005) A General Theory of Play. Considers all the dimensions of play.

Caillois (2001) Classification of Games

Newman (2004) What is a video game?

• “Elements of the video game table 2.1: Graphics, Sound, Interface, Gameplay and Story”
  
•  “What a video game is not: a bunch of cool features, a lot of fancy Graphics, a series of challenging puzzles, an intriguing setting and story” (Rollings and Morris, 2000)
• Why do players play? “Rouse (2000) identifies a range of player motivations and expectations. Among them, three are particularly notable: Challenge, immersion and players expect to do, not to watch”.
  
•  “Video games may be understood as a form of ‘embodiment experience”

Photo Credit: tjmwatson (under CC)

As mentioned in my last post, as a child, I was a huge fan of the Commodore 64. About four years ago, I decided to purchase an old C64 on eBay and relive my youth (not sure what happened to my original?). The C64 was released in August 1982. It was the best selling model of the 1980’s. It had a huge 64KB of RAM and a graphics chip with 16 colours! It really was state of the art. My parent’s bought a C64, in 1986, with the intention of using it to manage farm accounts. This was not to be so. It took my Father 4 hours to program the machine to play ‘Ba Ba Black Sheep’, let alone, create, calculate, manage and save any accounts. With so many failed attempts he gave up and passed the machine onto my brother and I. I don’t actually know anyone who used the C64 for anything other than gaming. This is where my passion for all things ICT initially began. I would spend hours working out how to programme the C64 to do very simple (and at the time, fascinating tasks) I managed to play small monophonic tunes, draw very basic pictures and of course there was the game playing. I find it incredible to think that 20 years later I am now able to do the same tasks and much more from my mobile phone! With regards to gaming I was an avid user. With 16 colours the C64 games were just fantastic! ‘Hungary Horace’, ‘Dizzy’, ‘Wheelies’ and ‘Road Blasters’ to name a few (others not the most PC in this day and age). It gives me a very nostalgic, yet strange, feeling when I set up this piece of computing history. Seeing the famous blue C64 screen, holding the ‘Run/Stop’ and 'shift' buttons simultaneously, waiting in anticipation for the game to load; will it load or willit come up with ‘system error’?

C64 Interface

 Hungry Horace Screeshot: Level 1

Photo credits: tjmwatson (under CC)

When I bought the computer some four years ago, I asked for my purchase to be delivered to the school where I was teaching. I couldn’t resist setting it up and letting my pupils see my new toy. At the time, my Intermediate 1 Biology class were working on the subject of ‘Alcohol and Its Effects’. Under the umbrella of this subtopic is ‘Reaction Time’. What better a way to demonstrate reaction time than with a good old 10 minute game of ‘Crazy Cars’ (This is a game where you have to race around a circuit avoiding other cars and potential hazards, ideal for testing reaction time!). After overcoming the basic graphics (one boy asking me, ‘but where is the car?’) the pupils surprisingly got really into the game. They were also very inquisitive as to how the machine worked (i.e. loading of cassettes and the general setup). You can now play many of the C64 games on the iPhone ,however nothing beats the real thing ;-)

The Commodore 64, such a fabulous computer of the past, they have even commissioned a classical orchestra to play the music from the games!

 Pac-Man Screenshot (iPad) Photo Credit: tjmwatson (under CC)

Pac Man was a game that I was first introduced to as a child in the late 1980s. I can't remember which computer I played the game on, but Amstrad springs to mind. The Pac-Man movements are controlled by the game player. The object of Pac-Man is to eat as many Pac-dots as you can without getting eaten by the different colored ghosts that roam around the pac maze. If you eat a large Pac-dot it will turn all the ghosts blue. When the ghosts are blue, you (Pac-Man) can in turn eat them. Fruit also appears at random points in the maze. If you eat these fruits you will gain more points.

For the purpose of the course, I downloaded Pac-Man "lite" (the free version) for my iPad.

I think this is a great little game for testing reaction time and small scale problem solving. However in terms of learning, I am not sure exactly what the player *is* learning? I guess there is a certain amount of physical finger coordination to be learned and perhaps the Thinking Correctly Under Pressure (TCUP) theory, but how could this be applied in another context? Perhaps when playing sport and choosing your tactics?

As Greenfield (1984) states video games are "merely sensory motor games of hand-eye coordination"; quite a sweeping statement but applicable in the context of Pac-Man and many of the basic games of the era. Other similar games of the 1980s that spring to mind Hungry Horrace (the first computer game I owned for the Commodore 64) and the Dizzy Game series (more in another post)

How things have changed with touch-screen technology and augmented reality just some of the things that I am looking forward to investigating further during this course :-)

Photo Credit: tjmwatson (Under CC)

Hello fellow students and tutors!

I thought I would use my first post to (re) introduce myself. Sorry if you have already read my introduction on the discussion board!

The Games Based Learning module is my fourth course. I am also studying the Research Methods course this semester. After these modules I am hoping to go on to the dissertation. I was a teacher of Biology and Science for 7 years. For the last three years I have worked in project management (ICT classroom based initiatives and VLEs). My current role is elearning community facilitator for the Scottish Traveller Education Programme (STEP). My current project is called eLearning and Traveller Education Scotland (eLATES) I am supporting, coordinating and managing the deployment of Glow (the Scottish Schools Digital Network and VLE) for mobile and Travelling Children. I would class myself as a *casual* gamer. As a child I was a huge fan of the Commodore 64 computer. More recently I was involved in a number of games based learning trials in the Primary Classroom (2008). These included the use of Sony PSPs as tools for learning and also using Desktop PC software such as Media Stage and CrazyTalk.

I am looking forward to exploring the potential that digital games have to enhance learning experiences for all ages and sharing practice, knowledge and experiences with others on the course :-)

More information about my online life can be found on my website: www.tessawatson.com

Please feel free to leave me and comments or questions (positive or negative!)... They are what makes blogging so worth while :-)

Ok I am rather sheepishly bring my seeping epistimological wound into my own blog where I can lick it quietly.  Sorry I know that is gross but you know what I mean - we had enough fur and feathers flying in the forum, that even though everything has settled down nicely I feel a bit nervous about rubbing my hands together and saying...

 "So, epistemology eh?"

It began here:

Me:  But in this case, I just don't see this because, it is for the purposes of our current discussion unknowable - the nature of truth and reality. It seems like quibbling to discuss this when a certain functional acceptance of true and false is necessary to get simple tasks (like writing dissertations and cooking chickens) done. Especially as much of it seems like semantics. Truth like greek love and eskimo snow has many different forms, and one of us picks one and an other picks another and then we have a discussion - which is essentially meaningless because we are talking about different things.

Hamish:  In writing your dissertation you will be planning to come to some conclusions, I assume? It is really rather expected. De rigueur, you might say. So you will be making truth claims. That is the nature of it. You need to know then, what it is you are doing. You are not doing journalism. You need to understand what you are saying and, impostantly, what you are *not* say, or able to say. That is what we are about. And it is challenging.
 

This is the thing, and I fear I may have exaggerated my lack of understanding along the way somehow, but I get what Epistemology is, and how it differs from Ontonology.  (I have no idea why I am capitalising them, maybe I have a German ancestor, or possibly just giving them the respect of Very Important Words I Don't quite Feel I Can Relax Around.)  Anyway, the thing is I am not sure why we have to bother with them in order to do research. Lol, I could hear the collective gasp of horror from everyone who has every done research ever after I typed that. Shall I explain here that I have never done research ever or leave that for another blog post.  Ok, ABP.  I really want to be convinced, by the way - I am very much lawful good when I play dungeons and dragons.  I would love to conform, I just can't fake it.

Anyway, according to the whims of epistemology I need to get off the fence and have an opinion about knowledge.

When I make a truth claim about something either (and these are the main current contenders, not an exhaustive list, and assuming my research is good) the meaning I am offering up:

a) it is there, in stuff, and is therefore something I have discovered - and had I not discovered it, it would still be there

b) it is in my head when I 'look at' stuff and I inflict it on whatever I am assigning meaning to, but it is not inherent in the thing itself

c) it is constructed in the relationship between me and stuff

If I  believe the former I am an Objectivist, if I believe the one in the middle I am a Subjectivist and if I believe the latter I am a Constructivist which is apparently the coolest position to hold at the time of writing - and you can see why, it is like the democrat of the epistemological world.

I look at those 3 choices and think "no I don't want to be any of them because I can see that all are equally possible and equally unknowable" and if I am picking one, then it is because I have to, or because it comes with good research tools and therefore I will be an agnostic when it comes to knowledge kthanx.

What makes it worse is that you have to pick one (and I get it that you don't have to be 'it' forever, you can select a stance for a particular research interest) because the rest of anything to do with research is totally dependant on this issue.  If you don't have an epistemological stance you can't have a theoretical perspective, if you don't have a theoretical perspective you can't have a methodology, and yes... Crotty concedes rather magnanimously you can have methods because they are rather promiscuous critters who will hang out with anyone, but if you have a bunch of methods without the other parts then pretty much everyone is going to be tittering behind their hands when you hand in your dissertation.  

I feel like I am being told that in order to read a Bible I need to be a Christian, and if I fancy taking a peak at a Qur'an I must convert to Islam (but don't worry I can go back to being Christian when I have finished).  And when I wail "but I am agnostic" I feel like my inner voice says, "oh well then why not adopt a Buddhist Approach, because that is essentially agnostic, it is not like they believe in God, and then you can read  the Tripitaka, which is pretty cool, it has the fire sermon in it and everything.  Go on, be a Buddhist, it will make Hamish happy.

Apparently we have been recommended to keep a blog for Research Methods.  I feel like I have had so many blogs my MSc in E-learning, but in fact it has been 2 main ones, this for IDEL and a Wordpress blog for Digital Cultures.  I didn't know I could access either still until Damien mentioned Holyrood Park blogs and I went there hit a few links and found this old girl sitting here all neglected like Miss Havisham. 

Seems appropriate that my IDEL blog gets to be my Research Methods blog.  If I had my time again I would continue to keep a blog after IDEL through every course, as I think that would have been invaluable.  Just thought I would mention that in case there are any IDELers wandering past, lol.  

Anyway, Research Methods... yikes.   A month ago I was in the blissful state of just worrying about the maths, little did I know that that worry would be utterly subsumed by my need to worry about everything else.  I am currently in the zone where everything I say on the DB seems to be wrong, or off the mark somewhat - so it will be a relief to come here and mutter to myself in my inappropriately humorous, journalistic manner.  I have struggled with being insufficiently academic from the beginning - I bet there is a blog about it back there somewhere - and hoped that one day something would click and I would have access to an appropriate mode of discourse (whether this would be a new way of thinking or simply a new way of presenting my ideas I don't know), but now I am going to do myself the favour of not worrying about it.  Hopefully I will be able to muster enough faux gravitas for my dissertation but ultimately I accept it is not me.  I am not academic.  Nuff said.

That isn't to say I haven't loved it.  I fully appreciate every piece of wisdom that has gone in.  I just don't seem to have much control over how it comes out, lol.  And before I give the impression that 'this is the end my friend' it isn't... I have one more course after Research Methods before I can consider myself a Master *snort* oh yeah, and the small thing of the dissertation. 

Lolz.

 Anyway, as ever this blog will be public and comments are welcome from all and sundry, especially the sundry.

I made some minor changes to the mind map. Assessment is now fully two-way, it wasn't before. And I have added Twitter and PBwiki to the technologies list.

Some short remarks:

• Like I said, I think I could not have drawn the map this way at the beginning of the course. No idea, what kind of map I would have drawn then.
• The bottom part of the map is heavily influenced by the community of inquiry model.
• I could have added more relations, but tried to concentrate on the most important ones.
• Technologies are relatively isolated, they are really the least interesting part, I think.
• The way library / resources are integrated is consistent with my thinking since about 10 years.
• I have added two web 2.0 principles, re-use of data, and co-design. Co-design is also responsible for the only crossing line in the map, but students cross a teachers' line, which is in its own way rather funny.
• Design and activities stand heavily out as important nodes. These will be interesting candidates for mind maps of their own.
• O yeah, students are the most busy node in the map, also kind of interesting.
   

I try to visit the Online Educa Berlin every couple of years because it is really the largest conference on e-learning. This year there was almost 2.200 participants from 108 countries. The largest delegation was naturally from the Germany but on the second place were the Danish then the Finnish and on the forth place  the British participants. I like Educa because there are lots of ways there to meet people and talk to them. Apart from exhibition booths, there are discussion session, topic lunches and informal gatherings. There are always good keynote speakers and sessions cover almost all possible topics.

This year keynote speaker was Talal Abu-Ghazaleh who talked about "Learning for All in the Digital Age". He said that changes and repairing isn’t enough, that we have to be creative and re/invent new things in education. Routine thinking isn’t enough and we should give more time to creative thinking.

Second keynote was Adrian Sannier with “The third way”. His presentation was quite a performance. He is skilled orator. He was also saying that we should reinvent the culture of traditional institutions otherwise emerging institutions will blow them away.  The only way to survive is to make cultural change in the institution. He pointed out three issues:

• Team Sport- no more individual teachers working for themselves and the only owners of specific information
• Keep score- if we prepare and design content, lectures, courses we should measure how they behave
• Fix what’s broken

 Last speaker was Charles Leadbeaterwho talked about learning strategies for changes in our approaches towards knowledge society. He shared his experience about education he gathered travelling arounf the world. In many places in the world (Africa, India, South America) education is very important as it brings, along with technology, a hope for better tomorrow for this people and they consider education almost as religion. Education provides them with choice in their lives. It made me think on Croatian education system. Have we forgot about  the importance of education? It seems that we care less about it then before. Another important issue he was talking about was that in education we should try to pull people into by motivating them and not pushing.

Afterwards I have listened presentations on the future of academic conferencing where presenters shared their experience and ideas in organizing online conferences. Especially Interested to me was conference to be held next year "Follow the Sun" as it will be fully online conferences using Adobe Connect, Second Life and Moodle.

It was interesting, are we going to abandon 2f conferences? Certainly existing model of f2f conferences (sessions with presentations) doesn't meet expectations of participants any more and there has to be more additional program and interactivity around it. Is the Online Educa going to be only online next year? 

Afterwards I moved to session on e-portfolio. I hoped there will be some talk about  using e-portoflio as the assessment tool but the main emphasis was on e-portfolio as a tool for self presentation to the future emplyers. There were statements that use of the e-portfolio increased tutors’ knowledge of learning in the other areas of course, about raising potentials of e-portfolio and so on. Presenters were mostly new in that field and that were their first experiences. I was interested especially in presentation “Mahara E-portfolio networking Platform as a Tool in RPL”

Well, you might ask what is RPL? It states for Recognizing Prior Learning. Presentation was from Helsinki University of Applied Sciences. They have started to use Maharain autumn this year and presentation was about Mahara as a very short course how to use it. They were talking about possibility to connect Moodle and Mahara and that in new Moodle 2.0 there is a possibility to export data from Moodle to Mahara. I know that the Finnish people are very advanced in the development and use of technology but in this case we (the University of Zagreb) are better. We have integrated Moodle and Mahara almost two years ago and we have single sign on. We offered this tool to the academic community and are trying to pull them into it. We have users who use it for self presentation but our focus is now to show them how it can be used in teaching and learning as an assessment tool. Well, when I shared my experience with the audience lots of them were surprised that we have been using Mahara for so long already. E-portfolio is not quite a new tool but it seems as it still has to be discovered. Discussion moved to topic of how to use it as a tool for self presentation to the employers and how to connect schools, labour market and employers.

On Friday plenaries were divided on the Academic and the Corporate sector. There was strong emphasis on the corporate sector this year and there were even sessions  called "Business Educa".

I followed the Academic plenary. I would excerpt presentation from Josie Fraser. She was talking about digital literacy's and learning communities. Did you know that number of users on the Facebook has increased from February to July this year for a 100 millions and that there were 500 million users in July ? Number is increasing rapidly. That is 19% of entire European population.

She also stated three models of literacy:

• Functional
• Socio-cultural
• Transformational

She has defined digital literacy as digital tool knowledge+critical thinking+social engagement. Digital literacy is a life long practice with skills in the context of continual development of technologies and practices.

There are always a lots of exhibitors. I would say that news are exhibitors from Africa and I was positively surprised with number of Polish exhibitors and their ICT solutions.  They have developed the tool for plagiarism which can be integrated in Moodle.

I went to the Business Educa session to see how different are these session from others. I have chosen session called "Learning in three dimensions, maybe four" . Besides f2f speakers there were announced two virtual speakers. I said announced because technology misbehaved :)) We waited and waited  as they tested and tried to connect but at the end we could hear one speaker briefly through someones' notebook and that was that. They have tried to connect them through the Skye but it didn't work. Well, when we finally focused on the f2f speakers we have lost concentration. There was a presentation about games, should we be doing them at work ? Speakers says YES as they help to learn new and unlearn the old context. So everyone, get the Call of Duty and learn :))

To me, new "discovery"  is Bert de Coutere from IBM, Belgium. He has written the book on "Homo Competens" which I'm reading at the moment. He said that with virtual worlds geography is history and we have "death of distance". Well, he has certainly read Virilio. We are moving into immersive world. Also they have made training courses for their managers in SL. They have created rooms there people are sitting at the table as to make them feel as the part of the group. I especially liked the world map which they have put on the floor and participants standed on the map at the place where are coming from.

Business leaders continue to look to the talend pool in higher education, we are facing growing competition. Business no longer has the time nor the resources for extensive retraining....we need the education system to develop these thinking....business interest in using online higher education continues to grow.. (V. Withers, 1992).

 The business environment truely needs the distance education, the organisations could go through the online management courses to retrain their senior managers and HR managers in stead of organising the courses by themselves, it could save time and also bring new and  fresh blood to the organisation. Normally, the stakeholders are from Universities or academic and instituational organisation, these organisations have a faculty and administravtive staff whos duties are different from the universities, school system or training department, and these stakeholders may supply the most academic, authority, latest information and management theories or structures to the companies who needs the new blood to improve their organisational capabilities.